Legacy of an ill-fated vaccine (book excerpt: The Cutter Incident)

In his book, Philadelphia infectious disease expert Paul Offit, MD, details how a bad vaccine from Cutter Laboratories paralyzed and killed people 50 years ago. The legal ruling in the case discouraged production of new vaccines, and Dr. Offit says changes are needed to encourage pharmaceutical companies to make new vaccines. This first excerpt looks at the Cutter court trial.

By Paul Offit, MD, AMNews contributor. April 10, 2006.

Book Excerpt
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On the morning of Friday, November 22, 1957, two and one-half years after the Cutter incident, the case against Cutter Laboratories began in the Alameda County Courthouse in Oakland, California. In a large, plain room lacking murals, wood paneling, or an imposing dais, [family attorney Melvin] Belli linked Cutter Laboratories to his client. He showed that Cutter made a vaccine that was shipped to City Pharmacy in Santa Barbara, California; that William Oliver, Anne Gottsdanker's pediatrician, bought Cutter's vaccine from City Pharmacy; that Anne received Cutter's vaccine by injection into her right upper thigh; that Anne was paralyzed ten days after the injection; that type 1 polio virus was present in Anne's intestines; and that the vaccine that Anne received contained live virulent type 1 polio virus.

Anne sat in the courtroom while her father told the jury what happened during the family's drive back home from Calexico to Santa Barbara, eight days after she had received Cutter's vaccine: "She vomited while she was in the car and said that her head hurt terribly. When we got to El Cajon we stopped off at a medical clinic and saw the physician there, a Dr. Myer. I carried her in. He advised us to get to Santa Barbara as quickly as we could. In the afternoon we saw Dr. Oliver [who] told me that he suspected polio. She began to have considerable pain, not so much in the neck any more, but in the right leg. Then there was pain in the left leg, and we noticed that she couldn't even sit without help."